Monday, 1 August 2011

Good Manners on Monday

There are certain things that I as a mother am always saying to my boys. "Pick up after yourself", "Put the toilet seat down", "No running in the house", "Use your manners". But what does this mean? What are good manners, and why are they important?

As a parent, I believe it is our fundamental responsibility to teach children good manners. Every person on this earth deserves to be treated with respect and feel positive about themselves and those around them. Displaying good manners means that you have respect and that you care about your fellow person.

Whilst we may affirm good manners such as "please and thank you's" in our children, it is also important to demonstrate manners in our actions. Because children mimic their parents and older siblings, we want them to learn positive behaviours like holding a door open for someone, giving up your seat on the bus or leaving the last cup cake for someone else (even though your mouth is just drooling for it!).

This week in our family, we are going to focus on language and manners. This involves the tonein which we speak to each other, the volume of what we are saying and moderating for where we are saying it, and thewordsthat we will use, with a special focus on excuse me, please and thank you. Each time the boys use their manners with the three focus words, they will earn ten cents for their respective money boxes.

We have been discussing tone a LOT with one of our teens lately who is a terrific kid but has decided to develop an attitude typical of this age group which is most evident in the the way in which she occasionally responds to us.

We have talked about the many ways in which we communicate and that the words we say are actually often a minor part of the communication process.